Twitter’s board of directors accepted billionaire Elon Musk’s bid to acquire the social media platform and take it private, the company revealed.
The announcement puts an end to a weeks-long drama.
Twitter’s board of directors attempted to thwart a hostile acquisition by using a so-called poison pill.
Twitter will become a privately owned firm once the transaction is completed.
Twitter has entered into a final agreement to be bought by a company entirely owned by Elon Musk for $54.20 per share in cash in a transaction valued at about $44 billion.
Twitter investors will get $54.20 in cash for each share of Twitter common stock they possess following the completion of the proposed transaction, according to the terms of the deal.
The deal, which has been unanimously authorized by Twitter’s Board of Directors, is anticipated to conclude in 2022.
Mr. Musk has obtained $25.5 billion in fully committed debt and margin loan funding, as well as an equity commitment of about $21.0 billion.
After the deal Musk tweets, “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” said Mr. Musk. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.
Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
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